


Broken Roots

by Starcrossedsky



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Daemorphing, F/M, fic of a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 05:52:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16402511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: The flower that blooms in adversity is the most beautiful of all.(Or: Aldrea, Dak, andgalan maheet, and the struggle of finding a new way to stay who you are.)





	Broken Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Tree of Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10932762) by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry). 



> As always, Daemorphing is originally Poetry's verse; I just am lucky enough to have been granted permission to play in the sandbox occasionally. Andalite lore is, I believe, _mostly_ compliant with Daemorphing canon proper; any errors are mine.
> 
> I figured this has been sitting in my WIPs folder long enough. (More at the end.)

It had been one thing to morph Hork-Bajir to see the valley as they did - the swirling of _hrala_ had been nothing more than a curiosity at that point. I had understood that it was as meaningful to them as our Guide Trees, but I hadn't _understood_.

Now, I didn't have a choice. Being a Hork-Bajir was better than being dead, but sometimes it felt like only just. And tonight...

Tonight I wished I had a tail blade to let fall to the dirt in grief. For tonight was the last night of my _galan maheet_ \- three times the length of time that was traditional for a herd's roaming, which now represented the length of time space-faring Andalites could be away from our _Garibah_.

_Liath Shien_ , I thought, but did not thought-speak, up at the distant stars, visible through the canopy. A Guide Tree for those destined to be explorers, who lead the way to new paths and grazing fields - the wish of my parents for a child who could follow in their joy for the undiscovered life of other worlds. Would its branches begin to wilt, now, withering away until my death sent the tree once more into dormancy?

Would any child be placed beneath those reaching branches again? Or had I followed my father into infamy so great that my Guide Tree, like my father's Jura Forath, would be taboo to future generations?

These thoughts and more echoed in the space between the brain of my morph and my true body, forever lost to the depths of Z-space. But even that pain would be tolerable in comparison, if I could rest these thick, clawed fingers on Liath Shien's trunk even once more.

But that was not to be, now or ever again. For a moment, my thoughts turned dark, and I was almost grateful for the shorter lifespan of the Hork-Bajir, because it meant that less time would pass before the end of my life.

Meaningless, of course. The likelihood that I would live to old age was slim to none. We had escaped the war and the screams of the dying, but that was only temporary. The Arn had modified us against the Quantum Virus, Dak and I and as many other Hork-Bajir as they could find who were still free, but that meant little, in the end. Dead of virus, dead of battle, dead a slave - as Dak had succiently put it only days ago, it was all still dead.

I had asked the Hork-Bajir (the _other_ Hork-Bajir) to leave me alone up here, and they had been all too glad to comply. They are not so simple as we had thought them to be, and none of the dozen in our makeshift camp were truly comfortable with me save Dak. Even those who didn't know that I had been Andalite knew that I was different.

But eventually, I heard the now-familiar scraping of someone climbing the trunk up to my perch. I didn't need to look to know that it was Dak; this was the place from which we watched the stars together, and sometimes the bright flashes of space battle. Rare flashes, now. There were none tonight.

Perhaps sensing my mood, he did not sit as close to me as he might have otherwise, did not curl beside me for comfort. I was grateful of the space. It let me close my eyes and pretend. I do not use thought-speech often anymore, but this time, I did. < Is everything well, Dak? >

"That is your question," he replied. "You are the one who appears unwell."

I didn't deny it. There would be no point. Hork-Bajir are surprisingly perceptive, and Dak even more so.

Instead I said, < Do you remember when I told you about the _Garibah_?  >

"The Guide Trees. Yes. I could never forget how excited you were, when you thought you had found kinship with the Arn."

He was frowning, and I couldn't blame him. The Arn are bound to trees, as Andalites are, but differently; they are hatched beneath them, and do not travel far from the tree they call home. In ancient times, prior to the devestation that wrecked their planet, before the Hork-Bajir even existed, the kind of tree planted above an Arn egg was thought to help determine their life path, the same way Andalites tell stories of those who had the same _Garibah_.

But the Arn had changed their trees, turned their bio-engineering on the very representations of their selves, and in doing that they had changed. The cities in Father Deep had been desgined by great artisans, works of stone that would gain admiration from any Andalite or any other race in the galaxy. 

The Arn did not create like that anymore. They did not have art any longer, as Andalites and Hork-Bajir do. They created only monsters.

< Nevermind that, > I said. < It's just... I've been away from the Andalite homeworld for a long time. >

"Too long?" he asked me. His voice said he already knew the answer; he just wanted to hear it from me.

< Too long, > I said. < As of tonight. >

He was quiet for a while, after that. I was just about to turn my attention back to the stars when he spoke again. "You are afraid. Afraid of becoming like the Arn."

< I'm afraid of losing myself, > I said. < I don't want to lose anything more. >

Because I had already lost something of myself to this war. My family, the blooming that I would never see - the whispers of _hralathu_ that had followed in my wake after that day almost hadn't needed an explanation. I knew what they meant in my hearts.

Was Liath Shien still blooming, even in the wilt? There was no one who could tell me. The Andalites had abandoned the Hork-Bajir, and I was Hork-bajir now.

"Aldrea," Dak said. "Look up."

I looked at him instead, confused, and he gave me one of those knowing Hork-Bajir smiles. "With your _hrala_ -sight. Look at the stars."

I had to close my eyes, first. To an Andalite, to be without vision, however briefly, is anxiety-inducing at best, but I had to change the way I _thought_ about looking when I used the _hrala_ -sight, because it didn't feel natural to me. Normally it just blended into the background.

When I looked up, at first I didn't even see it. Amidst all the natural currents of _hrala_ on the planet, however, I eventually saw what Dak was trying to show me, what he was letting me see for myself rather than just _telling_ me about it. 

A thin cable of _hrala_ , uncurling up past the others, from the body that still didn't feel like mine up into the stars.

"The Tree of Life grows all the way across the universe," Dak said, once he saw the realization in my face. "And now there is a branch from here to the Andalite homeworld, because of you. Andalites might live on the ground, but you still know how to care for trees, don't you?"

I reached out, and ran my fingers through the plume of _hrala_ , before turning back to him. This time, when I spoke, I used my mouth, made the words come out loud through my throat like a Hork-Bajir would. "I don't know how to care for this one," I said, and the admission was easier than it would have been not that long ago. "Will you help me?"

And Dak smiled and wrapped his hand around mine, and I thought about how he would look, with a _Garibah_ flower wreath hanging from his horns. And I thought about how _Garibah_ are never found all alone; just like how Andalites move in herds, they grow in groves, sometimes small clusters, sometimes huge forests, but always with others.

Together, we could still bloom.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things that I puzzled over originally when this fic was forming was, where did the term 'broken root' even come from? It's not something that a Hork-Bajir would ever naturally have, because their anchors are so inherent to them. Logic dictated, then, that it had to come from elsewhere - and the Arn were _really solid_ candidates. So I checked in on if Poetry had any concept of what the _Arn_ anchors were, and was basically given free rein to do whatever with them. 
> 
> The result? Anchors that take the form of knotted tree roots around the home, similar enough to the Andalites that there would be a kinship there even though the Arn are below-ground dwellers. An Arn's personal tree/room, in theory, is their anchor - they originally lived in large groups, but each had a specific place they returned to with knotted roots that told their personal story. This also explains why they thought _hrala_ -flow was critical to the health of the trees enough that they made the Hork-Bajir caretakers of it - their trees, their _personal_ trees, had _hrala_ -flow, because they were anchors.
> 
> Of course, so much of this was lost when they escaped their planetary cataclysm, and so the Arn as Aldrea and Dak meet them are all broken-rooted - literally coming from an Arn term for one who has lost their home, their roots. Like the Yeerks of the Empire, the Arn didn't understand what it was they'd lost, but you can feel the echoes of it in their entire society - in their callousness, their refusal to help against the Yeerks in any significant way, and instead just looking out for their own survival.
> 
> Moving on... Really, Aldrea is lucky, because she became a _nothlit_ in the one species that can replace a natural anchor. I imagine that it was very difficult for her at first, but that she nurtured it as best she could. I like to imagine that when she and Dak had their child, Seerow, her Liath Shien bloomed one more time, to the shock of all of those on the Andalite homeworld. To me, the exact moment of her settling is the scene where she cross the Arn city bridges even as she morphs into Alloran - that was always an incredibly compelling image to me.
> 
> The original Seerow's Guide Tree becoming taboo just felt right, with the amount of disgrace that was piled on him; if there's one thing Andalites do, it's harsh social punishments for anyone who doesn't fit the mold. I imagine that this is considered a sort of high-punishment akin to what's mentioned in the story of the original Illim, when the failed _javeshed_ 's name is erased from the story so that their spawn-siblings don't share their shame. Andalites are very much the type to remember and shame someone's name long after they're dead, as seen by their canonical treatment of Seerow, but to start a child's life with that kind of shame would likely be seen as cruel. Even vecols are thought to have some degree of honor in their isolation, after all.


End file.
